The Turkish team Space Soldiers almost ruined the fun of the Brazilian crowd watching the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament ESL One Belo Horizonte.
Space Soldiers, with Can “XANTARES” Dörtkardeş and Engin “MAJ3R” Kupeli, started the tournament crushing the home team SK Gaming in a dominant 2-0 victory on Wednesday (16-13 on Cache, 16-11 on Inferno). The Turkish players only needed a follow-up victory against FaZe Clan to advance to the semifinals. But they were dominated by the European team and lost 2-0 (16-9 on Inferno, 16-6 on Mirage), just to face SK Gaming again in the decider match at the Mineirinho stadium.
Space Soldiers, who had the chance to send the home team packing, couldn’t stand playing SK in front of the excited crowd in Belo Horizonte and were eliminated from the tournament after a 2-0 loss (16-14 Cache, 16-6 Dust II).
XANTARES and Buğra “Calyx” Arkın talked to Dot Esports after their loss. They explained their mindset during the matches, what went wrong in the last two series, and why the team decided to shut down their Twitter accounts for some time.
You had decent results in the past, especially at DreamHack Austin. What went wrong against FaZe at ESL One Belo Horizonte?
Calyx: In Austin, we wanted to win for real. But against FaZe, I don’t know about what happened exactly. It feels very stressful. We couldn’t play our game.
XANTARES: First of all, FaZe is a world-class team. We believed that we could do our A-game against them, but the match didn’t go as we wanted. They played super well, especially individually. The individual skill they’ve shown was on point. We made lots of mistakes against them, so in-game we just lost.
Can you talk about the SK matches? First you won against SK on Cache and then you ended up losing against them. What was the factor that made that difference?
Calyx: Actually we played the same in both maps. We didn’t change anything. But our CT-side is bad usually on Cache, and they are a strong T-side team. In the group stage, we took four rounds in the first half and yesterday we took four rounds again. We lost some important rounds yesterday, that’s why we couldn’t come back.
Why did you guys choose to blackout your Twitter accounts for some time?
XANTARES: It’s something between Space Soldiers and us. It’s not a good thing to talk about right now. We are just representing Space Soldiers. We are doing our best to represent them, to represent our country, and that’s all I can say.
Calyx, sometimes people look at Space Soldiers and think about Xantares and Maj3r now, but you had a great performance in the tournament. How are you feeling about your performance in the team right now?
Calyx: I’m feeling good. Sometimes I lost my motivation, but my team is helping me a lot. I am feeling good about my performance.
What are the long-term plans Space Soldiers have until the next [FACEIT Major: London 2018] and the tournaments that lead to it?
XANTARES: Until the major, we have a couple of months right now. After Brazil, we will just take some days off, we will just rest a bit, then we’ll start practicing as in our normal routine, and then there will be a player break. We will have some vacation, and after that, we will go to Europe I think, in a boot camp [in Germany] before the major. And then we will play the major. In the meantime, we’ll also play the qualifier for DreamHack.
Published: Jun 16, 2018 11:40 am